Anita Ordas

About

Anita Ordas is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of bioengineering and immunology, best known for developing high-throughput robotic systems for zebrafish embryo microinjection. Her landmark 2013 paper on robotic injection (99 citations) revolutionized disease modeling by enabling precise, automated delivery of compounds into zebrafish larvae—a critical advance for studying human pathologies in this optically transparent, genetically tractable model. This work has become a foundational protocol in the field, accelerating drug screening and functional genomics. More recently, Ordas has focused on comparative immunology, using zebrafish to decode innate immune responses to mycobacterial infections. Her 2024 studies reveal that *Mycobacterium tuberculosis* and its close relative *M. marinum* trigger an identical core set of late innate immune genes in zebrafish larvae, establishing the fish as a powerful surrogate for tuberculosis research. By demonstrating that human and fish pathogens elicit conserved transcriptional programs, her work bridges evolutionary biology and infectious disease, offering a streamlined platform for testing anti-tuberculosis therapies. With her dual expertise in automation and host-pathogen biology, Ordas continues to shape translational research, making complex disease models more accessible and reproducible.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Robotic injection of zebrafish embryos for high-throughput screening in disease models

   99 citations · 2013
2. 2
   The Human Pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the Fish Pathogen Mycobacterium marinum Trigger a Core Set of Late Innate Immune Response Genes in Zebrafish Larvae

   4 citations · 2024
3. 3
   The human pathogen <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i> and the fish pathogen <i>Mycobacterium marinum</i> trigger the same core set of late innate immune response genes in zebrafish larvae

   2 citations · 2024

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links